Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Workplace Gaslighting: Two-Person Conflict or One High-Conflict Person?
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:04): Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On True Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those that involve someone who may have a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Hi everybody. We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California where we focus on training, consulting, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. In today's episode, we're going to talk about how to help management or others see that conflict isn't always just a spat between two people, or more specifically in some cases between two women. Sometimes it's driven by one high conflict person, but is there a way to help others see this? But first, a couple of notes. Send your high conflict related questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or through our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links. Speaker 1 (01:14): Alright, bill, so we have another question that's coming from a listener that seems to be pretty important because we do hear about this quite a lot. So they say we love the show. Thank you. It has helped me a lot to navigate the situation I've been in for the last few years. I was a manager of the facility I work for, but around eight months ago I stepped down from management due to a high conflict person. This person was coming between me and my staff and then between me and my manager. When I tried to curb the behavior, the more I tried to point out what was going on, the H C P gas lit me to my management. I took the bold move of stepping down before the H C P could succeed in getting me fired. This did open some eyes, but the issue is many of the upper management that are trying to figure out the issues seem to be stuck on the impression that this is some type of caddy girl fight situation when in reality it is a manager that has been trying to deal with an H C P narcissist who is creating an unbelievably toxic environment. Speaker 1 (02:20): So how do I bring light to the actual issue in a boys' club that thinks the office girls are spatting? So Bill, interestingly, this has come up several times in my trainings in the past few months where people are asking, is it two high conflict people? Is it one high conflict person that's driving the conflict? A lot of people saying they've been in situations where people say, look, it's just, yeah, it's two people in conflict, particularly women that's a couple of girls just fighting. They're just being catty. Unfortunately, that means the real issue is being completely missed and so that means it's going to be handled. So we're going to talk about all of that, but I thought it might be best at first to define gaslighting For those who might not know what that is, Speaker 2 (03:08): Gaslighting is a term that's getting used more and more to describe when one person basically tries to say, here's what reality is, that's not accurate and conflicts with what the other person's experiencing. And the best way to explain it's talk about where it came from. It came from a movie called Gaslight, came from a play that was about someone who was a serial killer in Old England in the 18 hundreds. And this guy's wife, he was trying to drive her crazy and so she wouldn't have any complaints about him. She could never serve as evidence against him. They were in an apartment and the gaslights were the lights in the room. It was made out of gas. So we'd go behind the next room or the next office or whatever it was, and he'd turn the gaslights up and down and the woman would go be scared because there was a serial killer that was out and about and everyone knew it and they were scared who it is. Well, it was her husband, but he was trying to scare her by fiddling with the gaslight. So the main theme is gaslighting is when you tell someone to deny their own experience and tell them what they should be seeing as their experience. It's like they say, you yelled at me. No, I didn't yell at you. You're crazy. And it makes a person feel like they're crazy. So that's the basics of gaslighting. Speaker 1 (04:46): It seems that gaslighting is fairly frequent in high conflict situations, and I call it crazy making you start to think you're crazy or you start to think that you don't know your own mind or that you're flawed really flawed in some way or you're misinterpreting and misreading things. And I think that is the red flag you need to pay attention to if you start doubting yourself. And as you know, we've had a lot of people come to our seminars over and over year after year, and it's the same material and we say, why are you coming back? We'd love that you're coming back. But their response is often that the last year has been crazy making with all of the high conflict situations and maybe clients they've been dealing with, and they just need to kind of remind themselves that what the reality is. So lots of gaslighting going on in crazy making. So how do we get someone in management or maybe in HR or whatever setting it's in someone in leadership to see the reality that one high conflict person is driving the conflict? Speaker 2 (05:52): First as a fundamental principle that we want to communicate to organizations, the world actually is when someone makes an allegation of high conflict behavior, it has to trigger three theories of what's going on. One is that maybe that accusation is accurate. The second is it's not at all accurate and the person making the accusation is acting badly. And the third possibility is both people are acting badly. Now the way to communicate about that is through specifics is to be able to say there's these specific things going on and you need to understand it's not a mutual situation, and this is what I teach people in court cases is you need to explain to the decision maker or a judge usually is that this is a situation where you have to look at this person A, acting badly, person B or both, and in this case it's person B. Speaker 2 (06:58): And so here are the facts of why that is. So you have to alert them to the idea that this is not a case of two people fighting. This is a case of one person acting badly and the other person trying to cope and set limits. So you need to give the details of what's happening and the ways that you're working hard to not contribute to the conflict so that they can see, oh, okay, this is different from that. You have to attack the fundamental belief they have that it's two people fighting and then explain why it isn't so I know there's cases of two people fighting. This is not that case. I'm doing all of these good things and the other person's doing these bad things. That's the thing, but you have to have specifics. So many high conflict cases you can argue about in theory, oh, it's men versus women or it's age older versus younger or whatever. No, I want to know what the facts of the case are, what the behaviors are that are creating trouble. And then it starts coming into focus Speaker 1 (08:08): And I think we get into a position where we're defending ourselves in these situations so much instead of focusing on producing some evidence, Speaker 2 (08:17): When you're defensive, you also communicate to other people that maybe you're doing something wrong. So one of the things I always suggest is try to muster as much confidence as you can and as much calmness as you can and communicate this is actually what's going on. I can understand it might look on the surface like this and other situations are like that, but this is not that case. This is not an equal case. I like to give the example of a manager who had two employees both complaining about each other. One said, Hey, Joe's acting badly, and Joe, no, Bob's acting badly. And the manager was like, I don't want to deal with this. And fired both of them. And I think I heard about it, I think it was appealed that it became a court case that managers shouldn't do that. They have to bother to find out what's really going on. Speaker 2 (09:14): Otherwise you teach your team that they can be victimized and you don't want that. So find out what's happening doesn't mean you have to fire people. You may need to get them coaching. You might give both people coaching even if one's the primary perpetrator of the problem, but we can no longer just pass it off. And I think you're right that often women, especially by male managers get treated as, oh, it's just a girl fight and you'll work it out. In today's world, we're not willing to have that kind of sexist thinking. We really have to treat people respectfully and look at them as experiencing problems. And there's a problem that's going to bite you later on if you don't deal with it now. Speaker 1 (10:03): Yes. Now in this reader or listeners situation, they said that by taking the bold move of stepping down before the H C P could succeed in getting them fired, it opens some eyes of maybe some coworkers or others in the organization. And I find this happens quite a lot and I've seen it where people come later and have private conversations like, Hey, I really do support you. I know what's going on here, and that's great. You have to avoid letting that become its own war of us. I've got my team against this H C P and their team and instead of a team against the problem. But do you find that a lot, that some people do catch on eventually, and if they do, is there anything that they should do about it? You Speaker 2 (10:53): Talking about other employees below that manager? Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of time employees get it. The problem is that upper management doesn't get it because they're getting snowed by the high conflict person saying how wonderful they are and how awful the other manager might be. So yeah, I think employees saying, Hey, I get it. I support you. I see what's going on. That can be really helpful. Sadly, a lot of good people just quit these situations, managers, employees, they just go, I don't want to deal with this, it's not worth it. And they leave organizations and the organizations lose good people until they figure out where the problem is. That's why they should figure it out sooner rather than later. So I think with employees, sure they see what's going on, but getting upper management to recognize that's the problem is they often don't. Speaker 2 (11:55): They brush it off, they don't want to deal with it. Interestingly, I've done trainings in Australia, we both do a lot of work in Australia, and one year I was at a conference and it was about bullying and Australia had put in anti bully laws that actually had some teeth in them because if a upper manager ignored a bullying problem they were aware of, they could be personally fined for that, not as an organization but personally had came out of their money. And so they make it really strong. I don't know how the law's doing now, that was about 10 years ago, but I know they continue to have anti-bullying laws, which we don't have in the United States. Workplace bullying laws, we have sexual harassment laws, but not workplace bullying and a lot of times it's just right on the edge. But upper management needs to figure these things out and get people help and set policies and educate people about what the policy is Speaker 1 (13:07): And not promote that person because that's what I've seen a lot of is this bully, H C P bullies their way into becoming a director or becoming a leader of some sort in management and it's boy, then you really have some trouble to deal with Speaker 2 (13:28): And it happens more than people realize. Speaker 1 (13:30): Absolutely. So we're going to take a short break and then come back and talk about whether or not you should step down from your position in this type of situation. So we'll be right back. Let's talk about the fairness or unfairness of in this situation, the person had to step down or just made the decision to step down from their position in order to avoid being fired. Are there other options that this person could have considered? Speaker 2 (14:09): Well, first of all, let me talk about unfairness. Unfairness happens all the time around high conflict people. The thing is, what's your strategy? So if you're just saying it's unfair and thinking it's unfair, you do that with your friends, complain to your friends and get support from your friends about value judgments like that, it's unfair. The reality is it's often very unfair what happens, but you want to think strategically at work about what should I do? One of the things we always suggest is making a list and looking at all your options. Another would be speaking with a coach or a counselor or a friend or someone to look at what are my options here? Are there things I can do to stay put without having to step down? And there may be, should I try to get out of this department, out of this division? Speaker 2 (15:08): Is this the time for a big change? So first of all, look at your option. You always have choices, and I think that people lose track of that in high conflict situations. They feel like I don't have any choices here. Sometimes people choose to stay because they've gotten enough support and encouragement that they feel I can weather this storm, and so they go ahead and stay. I think stepping down, but staying within the organizations, one of the choices to look at and look at the reality of that. To me, the ideal is for people higher up to learn about what's happening and to take action such as having a training, have a training for the whole team in conflict resolution and in the process, high conflict people. We've seen two things happen. One is high conflict. People get quiet and they stop being as disruptive because they figure out, oh, I'm doing those all or nothing things. And those unmanaged emotions. The other is that they leave. They go, okay, I can see this isn't going to last. This isn't going to work for me or I don't want to be here anymore. I've seen many situations like that where a high conflict person leaves after a training in conflict resolution because they're not willing to adopt those skills, and yet they know that they stand out because they don't use those skills. So there are a lot of options. Speaker 1 (16:44): I think that's quite a strategy bill. Just hold a conflict training in particular, maybe a high conflict training, and then adapt your management strategy from those and that high conflict person may just disappear, go away. They just don't want to fit in with that anymore. Now, let's get to this issue of the boys club and an office girl Spatting. We probably don't want to even acknowledge that this is reality, but it can be sometimes. So the question from the listener is, should the issue of the boys club and that these are just office girls, spatting, should this be addressed and how should it be addressed? If it should? The Speaker 2 (17:32): Things I suggested is to point out this isn't just two women having a spat. This is a situation that's more serious than that and saying that out loud to whoever decision makers are. But otherwise, in general, it's a question of choosing your battles. If the organization has a persistent problem like this, and there are organizations like this, the tech industry's well known for being a male club, that it's hard for women to break into and you hear things about things like this and it needs to be addressed. Ideally at an organizational level, if it's a pattern that's part of the culture, you'd want to change that culture. There may be situations where there's one person that frames things as gender focus, but the organization otherwise doesn't. And you may decide, I don't need to deal with that at all. I just need to deal with this specific situation. Speaker 2 (18:36): The concern about does it come across as whiny or sadly to say complain to human resources or complain to a manager? I think that you ideally want to muster your confidence and be matter of fact and say, this is a problem. It's a problem because of A, B, and C. Here's what I'm requesting be done about it. What do you say so that you're not feeling defensive? When you're feeling defensive, you often almost reinforce the other person being more obnoxious. It's the idea we talked about a couple podcasts ago that you don't want to make yourself vulnerable in a high conflict situation, even though you might with reasonable people in an equal situation. Speaker 1 (19:29): And in those moments you might be feeling really amped up and you're feeling defensive, and then you do come across as maybe whiny or complainy or part of the problem, and it really does give a lot of oxygen to that high conflict person. You have to be strategic and smart in those moments so you don't look like you're a part of the problem, that you're a part of the solution. Speaker 2 (19:52): Let me add a suggestion, and that is role play with somebody having this discussion with a manager or human resources so that you build some confidence and have some words that you're ready to use. Because often just going through a role play, and we've done that on Zoom, I love doing role plays on Zoom because you get facial expressions, tone of voice, and you get words. And people just gain so much confidence from having done that once for practice. They go, wow, now I know how I'm going to deal with this. Speaker 1 (20:30): Yes, very good. So I hope this has been helpful to you, our listeners, and if you've been involved in a situation like this and picked up some good tips and strategies. So thank you for taking the time to listen to us. Speaker 1 (20:51): Next week. We're going to talk about a topic that I know you Bill really enjoy talking about, and that's high conflict contagion, and I think it kind of follows very nicely on the conversation we've had today. So in the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast and please tell all your friends about us and colleagues too. We'd be grateful if you give us a five star review so we can keep growing and helping more people around the world. Until then, keep learning and practicing so you can be confident in your human interactions in high conflict situations. As you do, your life will become more peaceful. It's all Your Fault is a protection of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts at True story fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.